Her literary breakthrough came in 1983 with the crime thriller Nattdykk (Night diving), a book which earned her the Riverton Prize.
Kvinnens lange arm (1992) is a collection of crime short stories.
The crime novels Sub Rosa (1993), En kjernesunn død (1995), Containerkvinnen (1997), Solefall (2002) and Dobbeltmann (2004) all feature the police detective "Anne-kin Halvorsen" as main character.
[2] With her novel Nattdykk Småge was the first woman in what has been called "a new female wave in Norwegian crime fiction".
She has received the Palle Rosenkrantz Prize for best novel translated into Danish (for En kernesund død).